The FCA’s £42m ad campaign is to raise awareness of the 29 August 2019 deadline for complaining about the sale of PPI.
Photograph: Financial Conduct Authority/EPA

An advertising campaign featuring an animatronic head of Arnold Schwarzenegger urging people to “make a decision, do it now!” has helped push complaints about payment protection insurance (PPI) to a four-year high.

The total amount of compensation paid since January 2011 to people who were mis-sold the policies is £30bn. In January 2018 alone, banks and other financial firms paid £415m.

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The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said PPI complaints rose by 40% to reach 1.55m during the second half of 2017. The figure for the first half of the year was 1.11m.

This follows the launch in August of the FCA’s £42m ad campaign – which is being paid for by financial firms – to raise awareness of the 29 August 2019 deadline for complaining about the sale of PPI.

PPI is Britain’s costliest consumer scandal, with banks paying out billions of pounds to compensate people who purchased often worthless insurance cover, thinking it would help them repay debts in the event of sickness or unemployment.

Banks and other financial institutions pushed the policies alongside loans, credit cards and other deals – but in many cases, exclusions meant customers could never make a claim.

Banks have been repeatedly forced to announce they are setting aside yet more cash to cover claims. Shares in the banking group CYBG, which owns Clydesdale and Yorkshire banks, fell 6% on Wednesday after it said it was setting aside another £350m for claims.

One of the adverts features the model head of Schwarzenegger, mounted on tracks, pursuing supermarket shoppers and urging them to stop procrastinating and look into making a PPI claim.

Christopher Woolard, the FCA’s executive director of strategy and competition, said: “Having set a deadline for PPI complaints, we are encouraging consumers to decide whether they want to claim, and if they do, to make their complaint as soon as possible, as many already have.”

Excluding PPI, the number of complaints received by financial firms was 2.21m – about 13,000 fewer than the previous six months.

The next most-complained-about products were current accounts, with 509,047 complaints, and then credit cards, with 314,586 complaints.

In all, 3.76m complaints about financial companies were received during the second half of 2017.